Seriously. The fucking Speaker of the House knew he was in Putin’s pocket. And that was before Trump was “elected.”
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Well
This was Giuliani speaking about Castor
Someone can correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m pretty sure that Impeachment is a political process and not a criminal one. The problem is that Trump does, says, or tweets a dozen things every day that are cause for removal from office
Maybe I look at things different. By far, the most clear cut and egregious impeachable offense in my mind is profiting off of getting Saudi diplomats to stay at his hotels and then funding their genocide in Yemen. This is followed closely by separating immigrant families and locking up babies along with dangling pardons to law enforcement who defy court orders to carry out this mission.
Again, there are countless reasons this oath breaking tyrannical POS could be impeached for, but sorry. I can’t get that worked up over his trying to enlist a foreign power’s help get dirt on a political opponent. It’s what I’d expect from him. Is ANYONE at all surprised that Trump would stoop to that and harbors of thoughts or has even carried out much worse offenses these last 3 years?
We are living in a nightmare horror movie where Republican are perfectly willing to destroy democracy and will not abandon Trump under any circumstances. That much is very clear. The only question is, can we get Republican voters to abandon the Republican party? Polls suggest a solid 28% support no matter what he does. I think he still enjoys a +80% approval rating from Republican voters. But many of them do concede he’s corrupt and disagree with his methods. These are the people that can and need to be flipped and in order to do that ALL of his misdoings need to be publicly heard
This one Ukrainian deal garners a ho-hum at best even from people like me who HATE Trump compared to his other atrocities. It just isn’t going to cut it and when the senate acquits, which they are like 100% to do, Trump will claim exoneration once again and head into the 2020 election more powerful than ever assuming the economy hasn’t tanked. Just my thoughts on all of this
A while ago someone was putting up the Veep closing credits and they were hilarious because they were so spot on in highlighting how inept this entire political arena is right now. Not sure if he’s still doing them
I seriously think Trump has Ops that has dug up dirt on everyone. Particularly Nunes and McConnell. There’s a reason they all did a 180 and love Trump now and it’s not just fear of losing their seats. methinks there is some major dirt on many of these senators that would ruin them
Russia is the one with goods on Mitch et al. They all got dirty money via NRA etc.
Different audiences. They consume vastly different news outlets and have different outlooks regarding reaching across the aisle and “letting the nation heal”. The NYT editor-in-chief has a dozen columnist on speed dial who within the hour can crank out an opinion piece about how another impeachment hearing is hurting the country.
The Democrats aren’t really good at relentless smear attacks either. They suffer from something called shame.
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I think there is a difference between “giving up” and just frustration with the system we are left with after decades of incompetence and complicity by the Dems. I mean even though I am on team investigate everything it seems the Dems have done an A+ job with these hearings. The only question is whether in the long run Ukraine is all they will focus on and if that is a good idea.
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Also it is hard to see stuff like this,
and not have a sense of fatalism about the whole thing. Although to be fair there doesn’t seem to be any polling after Weds/Thurs which were the most damning days. That will be interesting to see if it actually moved the needle at all.
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My dumb friend who likes to lose money to me on political bets is offering me 30:1 that Trump is convicted in the Senate. Feels like the actual line is way higher. Thoughts on the real line?
I might take him up at like 50:1.
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Seems like it kind of depends on the stakes and how you feel about taking a big sum from him (in the obviously unlikely event that Trump is convicted).
I think you’re probably right about it being closer to 50:1, but given how much weird shit keeps happening like every single day, offering him $20 to win $600 if something wild and wonderful happens seems all right to me.
Your risk is mostly something new that is extremely bad for trump coming out between now and the trial. Although if that happens he probably resigns rather than gets convicted.
On the other hand there are already a lot of extremely bad things that have been revealed and that doesn’t seem to matter.
Even people who watched a significant portion of it live but were only half paying attention are a problem. My father, who I bring up a lot in these types of examples, is a Never Trump center-right voter who used to consistently (but not universally) vote Republican. He didn’t vote for either in 2016, and plans to vote or whoever the nominee is for the Dems in 2020. There’s a 0% chance he’ll vote for Trump, he hates him.
But when we were golfing yesterday he kept mentioning how Sondland at one point said there was quid pro quo and at one point said there wasn’t, so who can be sure?
All the facepalms. I tried to explain it to him a few times, but he was really locked onto it.
I also told him he seemed really calm about all of it, including the prospect of Trump being above the law. The exchange then went:
CuseDad: I’m not worried because there’s no chance at all that he wins the election.
Me: You said the same thing in 2016.
CuseDad: But now everyone can see that he’s obviously an idiot.
Me: That was obvious in 2016.
CuseDad: He won super close races in a few states, it’s just not going to happen again.
A little later I brought up the recent Wisconsin polls and that seemed to click in for a bit that there’s a chance this guy wins again, but I think the 70 years of his life experience being that nothing bad CAN happen to America is too strong to overcome. A huge percentage of the population is programmed to think that the USA is totally invincible and has the greatest and strongest democracy that can never be toppled.
Also, it’s a little off topic for this thread, but I’m always bringing my center-right Dad who has probably voted 70-80% of the time for Republicans in his life up in the context of the Dem primary. His least favorite candidate, at least among the top 10 or so who have any real shot, is Joe Biden. His favorite seems to be Bernie. But he’ll vote for Biden if he wins the nomination.
I’m trying to get him to register and vote in the Dem primary (he’s currently registered independent) but I’m not sure if he’ll do it. It’s like I have him at the point where he’s off the Fox News (has been mostly off it since maybe 2015), he sees the GOP for the shit party it is, he’s going to vote mostly Dems although we may not get the straight ticket vote, but that extra step of identifying as a Democrat seems to be like a bridge too far lol…
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This is super interesting from a political strategy perspective. I’m kind of surprised by both the things we’ve heard reported about the GOP’s thinking… First it was six days a week for six weeks, now there’s talk of only going two weeks.
They have the opportunity to interfere with the Democratic primary, so the instinct is to assume they’ll do it because they’re the evil masterminds who love to just mess with Dems in bad faith at every opportunity. However, there are like three major things at play here:
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They may not want to hurt the candidacy of Warren and Sanders and help Buttigieg.
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It’ll dominate the headlines, and it’s debatable whether six weeks of impeachment headlines are better for them than six weeks of headlines about Democratic infighting over the finer points of healthcare.
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The longer they go the more opportunity the Dems have to inject new storylines. Like, the Dems can be running concurrent hearings into other malfeasance if they want to. They probably aren’t smart enough, but I think the optimal move is to schedule private testimony on a bunch of stuff and start leaking like a sieve.
Okay, so looping back, here’s why the reported strategies make no sense. Either you want to fuck with the Dem primary to the max or you don’t. If you do, six hours a day six days a week for six weeks is not the optimal way to do it. Scheduling stuff Monday, Wednesday, Friday for four hours a day with a long recess is the way to do it. 10a-12p and 5p-7p or something like that. You could then run it for 12 weeks and have the Dem presidential candidates racking up frequent flier miles like crazy.
Or if you want it over sooner because you don’t want the impeachment headlines, you go like two weeks.
All that said, I’m not sure the GOP has a ton of control over the absolute length because it’s not like they can tell the prosecution team how much time they get. My guess is they want that part to be as short as possible, then they want to draw out the spin for a few weeks and really get into the Biden stuff as the Trump team’s defense. This creates bad headlines for Democrats and the more time that passes from the prosecution resting to the vote is more time to crank up the spin machine.
Now, of course, that all assumes they want to damage Biden’s candidacy, which I think they do. It’s possible, though, that they would rather let him win the nomination then go after him in the general on the Hunter/Burisma stuff. It’s possible they realize they’d rather run against him than one of the others.
So there are layers on top of layers here.
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This is a tilting problem we face. So much apathy is being made worse by the obviousness trump shouldn’t be president. But it is NOT obvious to enough people so just waiting it out is not good enough.
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For starters, if the roles were reversed, the GOP would be blanketing the airwaves with pro impeachment ads. Like where the fuck is Tom Steyer now? #NeedToImpeach
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what comes next. I thought about making a new thread, even. But like he’s going to be impeached, then he’s almost certainly going to be acquitted in the Senate in like February. This gives him the total green light to do anything he wants in the 2020 election with zero ramifications until 2021, and if he wins zero ramifications until 2025. We all know what that means.
So we’re about to enter this new phase of just all out political war. The Dem nominee WILL be investigated by the DOJ. The president WILL use the office to pressure foreign countries to investigate the Dem nominee. The president WILL try to get foreign countries to hack for him, to cut deals to help him, etc, etc. Money WILL be funneled from Russia, Saudi Arabia and Israel to the Trump campaign. Facts will be totally disregarded. The amount of mud that is flying from the right will be orders of magnitude more than we’ve ever seen.
So what should the Dems do and what will the Dems do? There’s no way they do what they should do, imo, which is to match the fervor and intensity but do so legally. They should already be preparing now, and they’re not. They should be going for the transcripts of every call with MBS, Netanyahu, Putin, etc. They should be going through the courts now to enforce subpoenas so that maybe it plays out in time to have major public testimony about various misdeeds in June through November of 2020. They should be lining this stuff up now. Make sure the headlines are not like, “DOJ Investigates Biden/Sanders/Warren/Pete for _____________.” Make sure the headlines are about explosive testimony that’s damning for Trump. You have to win that battle, or the Comey letter is going to look like child’s play.
What else should they be doing? They should be making sure Trump is charged by NY and other states shortly after he’s acquitted in the Senate. Is he indictable? Well we should sure as shit find out, let’s make SCOTUS rule on that in 2020. Why wait? Is there any doubt the GOP would have charged Obama in like Alabama for some state crime if they had the chance???
You need the shit you’re slinging back at him to be a level more serious than the shit he’s slinging at you. If it’s an indictment in a court of law, hey, that’s not partisan politics that’s a GRAND JURY OF HIS PEERS. It’s a nice bonus that it’s ACTUALLY in the pursuit of justice as well. That it’s all legal and above board.
Meanwhile, as you keep turning the screws on him, you increase the number of unforced errors he’s going to make. All of this should be going on while the nominee totally ignores it and hammers HEALTHCARE AND JOBS AND HEALTHCARE AND JOBS AND MONEY AND JOBS AND HEALTHCARE AND MONEY AND HOPE AND YES WE CAN AND LIFE IS GOING TO BE SO GOOD FOR YOU WHEN I WIN.
Let House Oversight, Intel and Judiciary go in on him. And, while we’re at it, clear those committees of anyone who isn’t up to the task and load them up with total bulldogs who do not have future presidential ambitions. I want Maxine Waters chairing some of these hearings, so move her over or find a way to put them in Financial Services. In fact, change the house rules to bring in lawyers to do the questioning and bring in the best, most cunning, most assholic lawyer possible. Or let Robert de Niro do it, that’d be fun. This is fucking political war, democracy hangs in the balance.
On 11/4/20, there should be no dry powder anywhere within a mile of these Democratic investigations. Fire it all.
And obviously there should be targeted ad campaigns to suppress Republican turnout. There should be Super PACS that are not at all connected to the candidate that are being run by people like Tom Steyer that are running ads painting Trump as an out of touch scummy elitist who’s scamming the good Christian folks of God’s country. Has he paid for abortions for his mistresses? Who can be sure? Many people are saying it! Let’s dredge up some of the disparaging shit he’s said about Pence that ties into religion. You think Obama’s line about clinging to guns and Bibles was bad? What about this other shit Trump said?
But I have a feeling the Dems are about to walk into a fight like this…
Expecting to play thumb war. One, two, three, four I declare a… Sorry, my dude, you just got hit in the face with a trident. Why’d you bring nothing more dangerous than opposable thumbs to a street fight with tridents and swords?
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Well. I can see why he wouldn’t want to identify as a Democrat, but I see your point.
Thanks for sharing these stories about you and cusedad. They’re great anecdotes and insights. This latest one helped me clarify the difference in serenity and apathy. cuseDad can believe that in time, this will work out for the better in the same way every other terrible thing has in his 70 years, but apathy and serenity are the difference in doing nothing and doing what you can to contribute to that better outcome you believe will happen.
sigh way too persuasive a vision of next year but it is what it is.
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My mom also hates Trump - largely I assume because she doesn’t want to lose me. I still would bet money she pulls the lever for him in 2020. Chopping up babies just minutes from being born is too much of an emergency.
Have you informed her Trump has certainly paid for many of these procedures himself?
Not so fast. Had them done yes? Billed for them? Certainly. Paid them? Seems impossible.
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